Nursery Schools

Alex Cunningham Excerpts

Tuesday 9th September 2014 Westminster Hall

[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure, Sir Roger, to serve under your chairmanship—something that I seem to have done quite a bit recently; we are entertaining one another on the same Bill Committee. I welcome the Minister to his place. We genuinely look forward to working with his team, and I hope his appointment will usher in a new era of listening, which we have not had a lot of from the Department for Education team in the past four years. He will be relieved to know that I do not intend this debate to be made up of political ping-pong; the neglect of nursery schools in this country spans this Government and the previous Government. I hope, however, that we will at least get a Department that listens to what is happening and ceases the neglect.

The maintained education nursery sector does not have a long history in this country. Prior to the 1970s, local authorities were prevented from opening education nursery schools and offering early-years education. I do not know why that is, so do not ask me, but that was what happened. In the early 1970s, the rules were changed and local authorities were encouraged to provide nursery education for pupils aged three and above. Prior to that, most centres known as nursery schools were social services-run provisions or health-run provisions, largely admitting children with significant special educational needs or children on the at-risk register. From the early 1970s onwards, local authorities started to open education nursery schools, often concentrating on areas of deprivation first. The first nursery schools that opened in the 1970s were often large, 52-place provisions, offering early education to 26 children in the morning and 26 children in the afternoon.

Once the benefits of early universal provision became clearer from the 1980s onwards, local authorities started to follow a policy of opening nursery classes attached to infant or primary schools, with the long-term intention of creating universal coverage, but that meant that local authorities often had an uneven pattern of provision by the 1990s. Nursery classes were attached to most, but not all primary schools, and large nursery schools often sited in the wrong geographic areas. From the early 1990s onwards, there was a programme of gradually reducing standard numbers in nursery schools, amalgamating nursery schools and nursery classes and closing some nursery schools. There were moves to more appropriate buildings or more appropriate geographic settings for others.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. I know she has tremendous experience in child services. She talked about closures, and we have learned on Teesside that the North Tees and Hartlepool Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is closing two nurseries, at North Tees hospital and Hartlepool hospital. Will she join me in expressing shock at such a decision, which will lead to excellent provision going away and lots of jobs being lost?

[Pat Glass]

I am disappointed to hear that, because I remember visiting those nurseries when I was an assistant director of education in Sunderland in the mid-1990s. They were seen as a beacon of good integrated practice, bringing together education, health and social services. They were offering what we were hoping would be the future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Stuart]

Well, it will, but not for a Treasury Minister. As the hon. Gentleman will know, every Department comes along and says, “If only you gave me more money, you’d save so much later. No one would go to prison and you’d be saving money all round.” Understandably, the Treasury is a little sceptical. On that basis, we would for ever simply throw more money at the education system, because if we only provided the right start in life, we would have greater economic success and more highly skilled industries, and would live in nirvana.

The greatest thing I can say about the previous Government’s education policy is about how much they spent on education. The fruits are slow to emerge, but that is not to say that there are not benefits to be had if those resources are used well. Given the constraints we are under and the overspending by Government today, let alone five years ago, we are going to have to find the money for early-years provision from re-engineering our education budget. That could be said to be the more mature debate. It is always easy to say, “Oh no, we should just find the additional money.” The truth is that that will be very difficult.

On status, the Committee said in our report that the message that early-years teachers will not be equal to teachers in schools is “strong and unjust”. On pay, we said that it is not enough simply to set out a vision of equality with other teachers: if we accept the premise that the early years are a peculiarly critical time in a child’s development, Ministers need to set out—and this is the key point, whether it is done through finding more money or re-engineering the budget—

“a course of action…to a position where equal pay attracts equal quality”

of applicants. That is the key. We cannot have Government setting out an aim of an integrated work force, with that equality as a premise, and then failing to put in place any of the building blocks to take us there. At the moment, it seems to be all aspiration, with very little evidence of a closing of the gap. Even if it were to take 10 or 15 years, we would at least have a vision of how we were going to create a genuinely integrated work force, in which early-years teachers were given pay and status equal to that of teachers elsewhere in the education system.

At present, figures from the Pre-school Learning Alliance reveal that pre-school staff earn, on average, £17,000 a year, which is only around half as much as primary school staff, who earn an average of £33,000. The former Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk, confirmed that England has the biggest gap in salaries between those who work in nurseries and those who work in schools of any country in western Europe. As all members of the Select Committee here today, and others, know, the key issue in raising educational quality for anyone, at any time, is the quality of the teacher. That is what counts. If we pay people half the rate of what is paid to those working with children who are just a little bit older, is it any wonder that we struggle to bring in the innovators, pioneers and greatest communicators? We need to set out a plan—it would be good to hear the Opposition’s funded plan from their Front-Bench spokesperson—to bring about that outcome.

It can be no surprise that there is a continuing disparity of status between early-years and school-based teaching. The impact of that lower status is felt beyond the issue of attracting high-quality recruits into the nursery sector. Naomi Eisenstadt told us that the perceived low status of children’s centre staff can create a barrier to successful multi-agency working, adding that

“if you do not have status within the community and you ring the health agency, they are not going to ring you back.”

Delivering equal pay for early-years teachers would of course require the extra resources I have talked about.

[Alex Cunningham]

The hon. Gentleman will have heard me refer earlier to the nurseries at the North Tees and Hartlepool hospitals, which are scheduled to close. He has talked about staff. The Ofsted report on the nurseries says:

“All staff attend a wide range of training to develop their knowledge and skills”,

so there is ongoing professional development in that hospital nursery setting. Does he agree that that model should be rolled out elsewhere? Does he also share my opinion that those making the decisions on those nurseries might have benefited from the scrutiny and clinical examination that he would have given them had their decision come before our Committee?

[Mr Stuart]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that point. I do not know all the details surrounding that case, so I will not rush to judgment on those who made that decision, but he makes powerful points, which I hope will be heard clearly by those responsible for those centres, as they consider what they will do about them in the future.

The issue is that we either find additional money or rebalance the existing budget. Speaking for myself, that gives us yet another demonstration of why it was a poor use of over £1 billion of taxpayers’ money to offer free school meals to the children of middle-class parents who can already afford them, rather than deploying that funding in the classroom, where it could have been used to attract and retain the quality teachers who we know make such a difference to children’s attainment.

In conclusion, the Government have more to do, to ensure the survival of maintained nursery schools, to encourage the development of the network of nursery schools with children’s centres around the country and to set out a strategy to realise their proper aspiration for an integrated nought-to-18 work force.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lucy Powell]

I am pleased to hear that the hon. Gentleman took such a delegation to see Ministers. I hope some of that is taken forward. I passionately believe that we cannot do early years on the cheap. This will require some tough decisions on how slim resources will be spent, but will allow some of the best examples of early years education in this country to have not only the extra resources that are coming into the system, but the freedoms to give them the security and allow them to have the sort of innovative, creative and leadership role that the Oxclose cluster or Martenscroft nursery school in my constituency provide in some of our most deprived areas.

In conclusion, I reiterate the points that have already been made. My party has to accept its responsibility for ignoring the potential of nursery schools during our time in office. Nursery schools provide some of the best education and provide for some of our most vulnerable children, not just those who are deprived, but those with disabilities, special educational needs and those who would elsewhere be turned down by private providers, which do not have to accept them. My hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham recently published a fantastic report on child care for disabled children, which is a long-forgotten issue in this area. Parents with disabled children face barriers up to 10 times greater than those without disabled children.

[Alex Cunningham]

I am grateful that my hon. Friend raised the issue of children with special needs. Claire Guffick and Russ Andrews’s 16-month-old son Dylan attends the North Tees nursery that I spoke about earlier. He has a severe form of atopic dermatitis—a form of eczema. He is registered disabled because of the high level of care he needs. His mother said:

“We visited a number of nurseries but North Tees was the only nursery able to cater to his health condition and also cater towards his restricted diet.”

That is all the more reason why that nursery should be saved: it caters for the very special needs of very special children.

[Lucy Powell]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. He and I both attended the launch of the report by my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham, which examines how we can better look at meeting the child care costs of parents with disabled children. We heard some profound examples of just the sort of situations that my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) describes. Nursery schools are often the only option that many parents have. I would gladly join the Minister in making progress on the issue.

If the Minister has not done so already, I urge him to read the final report of the Education Committee on some of the issues we have been debating. There are good recommendations in it, and perhaps he will use today’s opportunity to update us on how he is advancing those. Does he agree with me about enabling nursery schools to hold the pupil premium for the early years? Will he consider the question of allowing nursery schools some of the freedom that other schools have to take on academy status?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Sam Gyimah)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass) on securing today’s debate. She has a long and commendable track record in education and the welfare of young children, within and outside the House, and I thank her for obtaining the debate. I thank the Select Committee Chairman, my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart), who made his case with characteristic forcefulness, and the shadow spokesperson, the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell), for her arguments. I did not realise that we shared an alma mater. I notice that she is wearing the colours of Somerville college, red and black, today. However, I guess we share something even more important, in that we are both parents. When it comes to early years, we have the same objective as most parents—wanting the best start in life for our children. There is no greater responsibility or privilege.

The hon. Member for North West Durham made a point about listening, and in the spirit of willingness to listen, I will mention that the Department is planning a series of visits. We will make sure that Pen Green nursery school in Corby is on that list, and I shall go sooner rather than later. I thank her for that recommendation.

We can all agree on the importance of early education. The research about effective pre-school, primary and secondary education published by the Department for Education today shows that the effects of pre-school last to the age of 16, so it is vital to ensure that children get a good pre-school start. In that context, maintained nurseries are delivering. As we have heard several times in the debate, they are often doing that in disadvantaged areas, where such high-quality provision can make the greatest difference. I fully support those schools where they are delivering high-quality, sustainable provision responsive to parents’ needs. One example of that is Beechdale nursery school in the constituency of the hon. Member for North West Durham, with outstanding provision and additional child care beyond the free entitlement. Another is the maintained nursery schools that are part of the Bristol early-years teaching consortium, where designated teaching schools link with local primary schools and private-sector providers to share their best practice. I look forward to the continued success of those fantastic maintained nursery schools, and more like them, in the years to come.

We should always bear three things in mind in considering child care and early education. We need it to be accessible, affordable for parents and of high quality. There has been some discussion of priorities, and with that triangle the equation is not always as straightforward as it can seem. With child care, one size does not fit all. Parents are obviously concerned about their children’s learning and development, but often they also want somewhere for them to be looked after while they are at work, or when they need a break. Parents look for various solutions when they look at the child care marketplace.

Maintained nursery schools make up a very small part of early education in this country. As we have heard, there are now 414, compared with nearly 7,000 primary schools with nursery classes—6,843, to be precise—and almost 18,000 private or voluntary day nurseries and pre-schools delivering early education. We have a mixed economy for child care and early education. To respond to what the Select Committee Chair said, that should be evidence enough that the Department is not pursuing coherence at the expense of equity. We do not actually have a coherent sector at all; we have a mixed economy, with different types of provision.

[Alex Cunningham]

I congratulate the Minister on his new role. I do not want to be boring about the North Tees and Hartlepool hospitals nursery closures, but they are part of the mixed economy the Minister has talked about. Can he suggest any intervention he could make? Could his officials speak to the hospitals about advice or other help that the Government could provide that would save the specialist provision of those nurseries for disabled and other special needs children? That would enable parents to set their anxieties aside.

[Mr Gyimah]

I suggest that the hon. Gentleman write to me, and I will then respond accordingly and get my officials to look into the matter.

I am conscious of the time, so I shall race quickly through my remaining points. Closures have been mentioned several times. The small number of closures that have happened are not necessarily a sign of a long-term trend or a decline in the number of maintained nursery schools. Some have merged or federated with neighbouring schools, so some of the reduction in the overall numbers from 468 10 years ago to 414 now is down to sensible restructuring based on assessment of local need. Despite that reduction, I can reassure all hon. Members that the number of pupils attending maintained nursery schools has increased over the same period, from 39,000 in 2004 to 40,000 in 2014. The hon. Member for North West Durham would describe that as static, but it is a modest increase, and it does not seem at all like a decline to me.

There is as much protection for maintained nursery schools as there is for any other school, if not more. Local authorities cannot close maintained nursery schools without following due process. In fact the current school organisation guidance, published in January 2014, states clearly that

“there is a presumption against the closure of nursery schools”.

That does not mean that a nursery school will never close. Indeed, it cannot be right to guarantee that maintained nursery schools will stay open at all costs, without ensuring that they provide sustainable, high-quality provision that meets the needs of local parents and children. Nevertheless, the case for closure should be strong. The guidance requires that

“any proposal to close should demonstrate that: plans to develop alternative provision clearly demonstrate that it will be at least as equal in terms of the quantity as the provision provided by the nursery school with no loss of expertise and specialism; and replacement provision is more accessible and more convenient for local parents”.